I believe this amendment is not consistent with the intent of the bill, which is to give CSIS an effective mandate to reduce all threats to the security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act.
By limiting the scope of the threat reduction mandate, the amendment would greatly reduce the value of threat reduction as a national security tool. Although the focus of Bill C-51 is terrorism, the rationale for a threat reduction mandate applies equally to the full range of threats to the security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act. Opportunities to reduce threats have been identified beyond terrorism, but CSIS, lacking the necessary threat reduction mandate, has been unable to take advantage of those opportunities. We need to advantage them, and therefore I am not in favour of this amendment.